A West Australian company, Miraquin, has been honoured for fostering a diverse workplace at the 2006 National Diversity At Work Awards. The company provides psychological and audiological services and has 12 staff, including seven born overseas and two with disabilities. Because of the linguistic diversity of the team, Miraquin is able to provide psychological and audiological services to the community in eight different languages.
Whilst some of Miraquin's audiologists have backgrounds in psychology, the company employs two staff specifically providing psychological services. One of these is Ralph Monley, who is both a Member of the APS and a committee member for the WA section of the College of Organisational Psychology. The other is a provisional psychologist and Associate APS member Charan Jit Singh. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mr Singh was frequently taunted in public as being part of the Taliban and was often spat on. He was physically attacked in his previous workplace. As an Indian Sikh, Mr Singh and his brethren believe in peace but that did not stop vandals attacking both of Perth's Sikh temples in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Mr Singh is the first Indian Sikh psychologist in WA and part of the commendation by Diversity At Work Australia particularly praised his willingness to provide free counselling to the poor. "When I worked (in Australia) after September 11 and got attacked, I thought the only way to tell people that I'm a good person is to do things for the community," he said. "If people are having a hard time I go out of my way to help them."
